Apple Might Be Borrowing One of Samsung’s Coolest Features

Is the iPhone Edge in our future?

Remember when we said Samsung blew Apple out of the water with its S7 Edge smartphone? Well, that competitive edge (pun intended) may not last for long, because rumors are swirling that Apple might be the next tech giant to roll out a device with a wraparound display. The Verge gave the Samsung S7 Edge its highest score ever for a smartphone, and while some of the features (like the Edge shortcut menu) have been called “gimmicky” by reviewers, it’s no secret that the internet loves that phone.

In 2011, Apple filed a patent for a phone with a wraparound display. According to the patent, the edges will replace the current iPhones’ buttons on the side with virtual controls (because they can). And while there’s no official word of a wraparound display, DigiTimes recently shared a tip that Apple is considering releasing a phone with a 5.8-inch screen, which may not seem like a big deal. But here’s the thing: because the display measurement of a smartphone comes from the diagonal — and not the height — if we were to take the current height of the 5.5-inch iPhone 6s Plus, and replace the 5.5-inch screen with a 5.8-inch one, there would be an extra 7.25 mm left over. That’s enough to wrap around the sides of the phone, which means that the Apple Edge rumors could be very plausible.

In a second patent filed in 2011, Apple experiments with completely new shapes, including a cylindrical phone with a screen that wraps around the entire device. To do this, Apple would have to switch their screens to organic light-emitting-diode (OLED) displays — which are thinner, lighter, and most importantly, flexible. At the very least, we probably won’t be seeing a cylindrical OLED iPhone until 2017 or 2018 (if ever), but hey — we can keep our fingers crossed.